It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

Important detail: it's about "voice", not "[Google] Voice", though that's how it looks in the title. To me, at least.<p>Basically, data plans are netting the cell companies more and more money, while voice plans are netting less and less, with the inevitable crossing-point somewhere in the near future (they're saying 2013, by just following the trendlines).

It's time for carriers to understand that charging per minute or per message (even more ridiculous) are concepts of the past. It's all about data.

Uh, has anybody here <i>ever</i> racked up $60 worth of mobile calls in a single month? That pretty much describes my pay-as-you-go fees for an entire <i>year</i>.<p>So, sure, if you pay them for more phone calls than you could ever possibly make, they'll let you make as many phone calls as you like.<p>This reads less like news and more like a placement by whichever carrier is offering this plan.

So basically AT&#38;T is matching what Sprint already does. Meanwhile Sprint is busy raising its effective rates to match AT&#38;T and Verizon. I love competition.<p>Here is to hoping as tech marches on some decent Android phones trickle down to prepaid. I'd like off the contract bandwagon please.

Summarized: as tech advances, the same services become cheaper.<p>Add this article to the "no duh" category.

Oh come on. Smart phones in general still only make up a small percentage of the over all subscriber base for the big phone companies. The rest of their subscribers still burns through minutes and text messages every month.<p>I welcome the day where I can have data only phone plan with iphone.

Boner-kill: You have to be subscribed to their criminally-overpriced unlimited messaging plan to get down on the unlimited mobile calling. Had to screw it up somehow, huh AT&#38;T?

Vodafone here in Australia offer unlimited calls and text (to any number) plus 1Gb data for $45/month<p><a href="http://www.vodafone.com.au/personal/plans/infinite/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.vodafone.com.au/personal/plans/infinite/index.htm</a>

As someone who has always hated talking on the phone, I agree.